11-26-1997 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

By Tammy Parker SINGAPORE —An air of triumph permeated last week's second annual CDMA World Congress as the sup- porters of Code Division Mul- tiple Access celebrated the past year's network launch- es, announced a unified branding plan and prepared to enter the next millennium Next - generation CDMA toasted in Singapore dation for next - generation in the group to provide a forum multimedia and high -speed da- to discuss next - generation to services. technological needs and appli- IS-95 operates in 1.25 mega- cations. The four vendors will hertz of spectrum while B -CD- work with the ASI task force. MA uses upward of 5 mega- By basing 3G development on hertz, the latter being the min- current CDMA technology, the imum -size spectrum chunk CDG members hope to provide considered by many as essen- a migration path for operators. tial for video and multimedia Proposed 3G standards will transmissions. However, meet or exceed the Interna- LaForge bristled at the de- tional Telecommunications scription of IS -95 as "narrow- Union's requirements for high- " band," saying that name is speed data transport to a sin- particularly galling" because gle subscriber, the CDG said with a platform for advanced wireless services. With more than 50 CDMA networks operating globally, this year's World Congress presented ample opportunity for the CDMA camp to scorn critics. "Four years ago, they said CDMA wouldn't work in a lab. Three years ago, they said it wouldn't work in the field ..." taunted a video re- leased by the CDMA Devel- opment Group. Today, 2.75 million paying customers use CDMA networks, noted Per- ry LaForge, CDG executive director. LaForge opened the World Congress by announcing to some 800 attendees the launch of cdmaOne, a brand name designed to provide a co- hesive identity for a family of CDMA -based services. The new moniker encompasses standards terminology such as Interim Standard -95, IS -96, IS -98, IS -99, IS -6 and IS-41. The name also is targeted at dissuading people from calling IS -95 "narrowband CDMA," as opposed to what is called broadband CDMA, a CDMA variety developed and backed by InterDigital Communica- tions Corp. in King of Prussia, Pa. The cdmaOne concept plays into the CDG's master plan of positioning IS -95 and related derivatives as a foun- . cdmaOne is the only "world- The International Telecommu- wide wideband wireless stan- nications Union's Task Group dard." Global System for Mo- 8/1 on International Mobile bile communications technolo- Telecommunications 2000 gy, in comparison, uses 200 (1MT- -2000) hopes to develop kilohertz of bandwidth divided universal, advanced systems among eight time slots. that could be used around the InterDigital, Samsung Elec- year 2000 in the 2 GHz fre- tronics Co. Ltd. and Siemens quency band. Requirements in- AG have shown how B -CDMA elude wireless data rates of 144 can be used for wireless local kilobits per second at mobile loop applications and have speeds, 384 kbps at pedestrian touted the technology for mul- speeds and 2 megabits per sec - timedia communications. and in a fixed locale. The CDG continued its ad- Data analyst Ira Brodsky vanced services campaign on challenged the manufacturers the second day of the World to justify their plans for 3G de- Congress. The group joined Lu- velopment, saying, "I don't see cent Technologies Inc., Motoro- big demand yet for 384 K la Inc., Northern Telecom Ltd. pedestrian access" to data ser- and Qualcomm Inc. to an- vices Admitted Qualcomm's nounce an alliance to develop John Major, "There is a certain next - generation specifications amount of faith in this vision.' for CDMA using bandwidths of CDMA will be competing with 3 megahertz and more. other technologies such as "The four vendors here are GSM and Japan's Personal not trying to ram a standard Handyphone System for ITU down anybody's throat," com- recognition under EMT -2000. mented Tony Hennen, senior The European Community is vice president and general backing GSM as foundation for manager of Motorola's Cellular its 3G vision, which is being de- Infrastructure Group Product veloped as the Universal Mo- Operations. bile Telecommunications Sys - Carriers, particularly those in tem, or UMTS. The four com- Asia, are requesting that man- parries working on advanced ufacturers work on third -gen- CDMA specs also are working eration, or 3G, services. on developing other third -gen- Earlier this year, the CDG eration standards. "There will announced its Advanced Sys- be more than one 3G stan- tems Initiative, an effort w th- dard," Hennen noted. However, RCR JUNE 9,1997